The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are, --/ Never read a book that is not a year old./ Never read any but the famed books./ Never read any but what you like.

What's a book? Everything or nothing. The eye that sees it all.

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in your reading have been like the blast of triumph out of Shakespeare, Seneca, Moses, John and Paul.

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.

Fame is proof that people are gullible.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side...when the glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? This time...is a very good one..